8 ms·

The attack of the SuperFakes

46 points by SQL2219 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cantrip 9y ago
If a high quality watch is made from the same materials, in the same conditions, with the same brand logo, what does the term fake even mean? From the article: "Historically, less than 5 percent of the watches that we authenticate are fake,” said Powell. “At one point this number was as high as 10 percent.” However, the numbers are growing." Is it possible that the number of "fake" watches was always going up but that even experts can't tell the difference any more? And lastly, is it legal for watch sellers re-sell fake watches themselves? If they do, what incentive does a watch seller have for telling you the watch you want to sell to them is authentic?
- adventured 9y ago
  > If a high quality watch is made from the same materials, in the same conditions, with the same brand logo, what does the term fake even mean? It means made by an entity without authorization to produce that thing with that brand. Not authentic. It's operating without the historical reputation of the brand (company) behind it, which typically applies to things such as quality, customer service, resale value, etc. If I buy an identical item (as close as possible) to a high priced luxury watch, made by a counterfeiter, are they going to provide me support for the item I bought? Do they stand behind the counterfeit? No. That's the consequence of it not being authentic, it doesn't come with any of the other substance behind it.
  - goialoq 9y ago
    "Authorization" is not more of a factor in quality than materials and production. Authorization is a proxy for these things.
  - grkvlt 9y ago
    Not necessarily. 'Honest John's Genuine Rolexes and Used Cars' could well provide support and warranty for the watch they sold me. It may even be in Honest John's best interest to fix at least minor issues, to prevent me discovering I bought a fake. It's only Rolex who are not bound to provide any services.
- nkrisc 9y ago
  > If a high quality watch is made from the same materials, in the same conditions, with the same brand logo, what does the term fake even mean? That doesn't quite sound like it's the case here though. That's what happens with other products and after-hours, unofficial production runs though. In that case, there is no difference and the issue is really just a legal one. It sounds like these watches, while difficult to determine as fake, aren't quite the same quality as the real things.
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  I think the problem is these fakes are better than bad, but not good, quite. Swiss watch prices are partly inflated by hype, but the quality of many of those movements, and having been assembled by professionals, is worth quite a bit. Where a cosmetically good knockoff will have a less fabulous movement, and may or may not have been built by a skilled watchmaker. Selling them upfront as "homage" or "replica" watches seems fine to me, though. Presumably the incentive the jewelers and watch-sellers have to avoid participating in the fiction is loss of reputation. Once one buyer comes forward to say you sold them a fake, the floodgates would open.
- foobarrio 9y ago
  A lot of the advantages of the "better" construction aren't seen until the watch is older. An acrylic glass vs saphire glass crystal on a watch both look the same when new. Over 10 years, they will look much different. Heat-treated blued steel watch hands supposedly rust much less compared to the chemically treated blued hands. I am not sure if this justifies the price difference of a $50 fake vs $5,000 Rolex. I've never owned a watch for more than 5 years so none of this is personal experience! However the recent wave of smart watches made me look into watches now and I have a couple of nice dress watches I researched a bit before I purchased.
  - at-fates-hands 9y ago
    > I am not sure if this justifies the price difference of a $50 fake vs $5,000 Rolex. I owned a five year old Rolex Submariner and had it for about three years. You could tell it was a solid, well built watch. However, after the first six months, I found it was not keeping very accurate time. Sent it back to Rolex and they fixed it and sent it back. Was fine for another six months, then it started again. Sent it back and was charged $300 for the repair. After another four months it started again and I finally gave up on it and sold it for a fraction of its worth. This is pretty much par for the course on the high end stuff I've bought over my lifetime. High end (not pro stock) hockey stuff just falls apart and isn't durable. Soccer stuff? Same thing. Dress shoes, suits, clothing? Same thing. High end mountain bikes? Same thing. I had three high end mountain bikes (all different manufacturers) and the derailleurs needed adjustment constantly, the high end Magura hydraulic disc brakes squealed constantly and the Fox forks all leaked after a few months. I was a single track guy so its not like I was doing Red Bull contests either. I got a middle tier Cannondale and have had it since 2006 with little or no issues. I found that after so many years of being disappointed with "high end" expensive stuff, your best bet is to not get the lowest cost thing or the most expensive, but the middle tier stuff I've always found to be not only durable, but far more dependable.
    - foobarrio 9y ago
      That sucks to hear. I guess this is also similar to high-end cars where they are more problematic than a trusty Toyota Corolla. I've love to own a Rolex Explorer or an Omega Seamaster one day but I am not sure I would ever buy one. I've been happy with Seikos and Casios. I daily wear a Seiko sarb033 on a black leather strap and it honestly as classy as I'd ever want out of watch. I really want to believe that branding isn't the only difference when comparing high-end watches but perhaps this is not the case.
- compiler-guy 9y ago
  If the two are completely indistinguishable, it means that the company is on the hook for warranty service. Worse, it means that the company no longer controls its own distribution channels, pricing or exports. If the company makes a mid-model change (bug fix, whatever), then it also can't stop shipments of the bad ones.
  - jackcarter 9y ago
    To corroborate the warranty issue: There's a temporary exhibit at Winterthur in Delaware [0] on the topic of counterfeits. They had a fake Birkin bag next to a genuine article, and apparently the fake had been through an official Hermes cleaning without detection. [0] http://www.winterthur.org/treasuresontrial http://www.winterthur.org/treasuresontrial
- _ph_ 9y ago
  Well, isn't it quite simple? The original watch was made and sold by the company which constructed and designed it. At a minimum, buying a fake is equivalent to buying software on the black market, afterall, the bits are the same... But of course, the fakes usually are cheaper, because they are not as well made as the originals. That is ofte not visible by an outside inspection, but might contain different qualities of metal used, different production processes, less care of assembly. Have you seen how much know-how goes just into making the main spring of a Rolex? They invested a lot of R&D into it. Of course you can just use a standard spring. But it won't be the same quality. If you don't appreciate that extra bit of quality in a Rolex (or any other comparable brand), then there are excellent original mechanical watches at basically any price point, starting at $ 100 up. Finally, I don't think it is legal to sell or resell fake watches in many places, in some countries even owning them can be a felony. If you don't disclose that the watch is fake, it is clear fraud, and even if you do, it is still a misuse of copyrighted and trademarked material.
- smn1234 9y ago
  An iPhone knockoff will not function as well as an iPhone. Whether material used or engineering of components or assembly of the end product. It’s not about simple, straightforward metals either, but very specific, proprietary, researched blends. Some watch brands use metals that make the watch incredibly light. Others, based on clients’ preference, make the watch very heavy. Particluarly, in a high end watch, not only do you pay for the craftsmanship and artistic design, form and function, but also for accuracy (e.g. +/- seconds lost per day, how certain tilts and the effect of gravity on influencing loss in accuracy) and power reserve and level of complications all working together. No disruption from magnetism or other natural forces. A lot of refinement goes into a high end watch. A fake becomes pretty obvious. You also have to appreciate the scale. All that mechanics. Went from grandfather clocks to pocket watches to wrist watches. Getting smaller, more complicated (day, date, moon phase, alarms, etc.) and days of “natural” power reserve. It’s quite fascinating engineering in fact ....
RickJWagner 9y ago
In a way, I guess this is a form of 'luxury tax'. You can buy an excellent watch for under $30 at any Wal-Mart. It'll come with a no-hassle warranty, will be handsome in appearance and will function flawlessly. But it won't be a 'luxury good' and it never will be.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  For all the recent talk of the energy cost of bitcoin, it would seem a far greater amount of energy (money, time etc.) is expended on making things that are slightly worse than other options that are available, but more exclusive and therefore sought after by some part of our monkey brains.
- FiatLuxDave 9y ago
  I've always wanted to start a luxury brand called TAKEN. "Wow! What kind of watch is that?" "I got TAKEN!" The ultimate Veblen good.
  - grkvlt 9y ago
    Actually, 'Veblen Watches' sounds really good... I wonder if the name is available?
- SyneRyder 9y ago
  That reminds me of a quote from the book "The Billionaire Who Wasn't", about Chuck Feeney, co-founder of DFS, who secretly donated $8 Billion to various charitable causes until he was outed: “Since my earliest days I have been frugal, but I am a frugal person in that I hate waste, at any level,” says Feeney, who always wears off-the-peg clothes, a cheap plastic watch, and reading glasses of the type sold in book-stores. “If I can get a watch for $15 that keeps perfect time, what am I doing messing around with a Rolex?”
  - makomk 9y ago
    I imagine there may have been some other reasons he wanted to keep the donations to Sinn Fein a secret at least, but yeah... (Their paramilitary wing the Provisional IRA was still bombing British cities back then.)
Alex3917 9y ago
> But in the case of watches like Movado, Omega and Rolex, it’s getting harder to tell the real from the replica and the stakes are surprisingly high. Verizon should send the author to live in Yemen for a year.
ChrisClark 9y ago
I know a very wealthy businessman in China, he's expected to wear expensive watches, dress the part, etc. But he just buys fakes all the time. It looks real enough to impress, and he saves a lot of money.
- goialoq 9y ago
  This is reportedly quite common. Supposedly (but I have doubts), there's a similar market for cellphones with fake specs -- the consumers know the specs are fake, but they need the fake exterior to impress their business partners.
  - grkvlt 9y ago
    > cellphones with fake specs but, don't you just need to show off any old cellphone, and then say something like 'this baby has twenty-three ARM IXXIX cores, running at one hundred point six gigahertz, with forty terabytes and a double AMDXOLCiD display!' to fake the specs?
- dreamfactored 9y ago
  The business guys who are into watches tend to have a good look at each others, talk watch collecting for a while, and can usually tell fakes.
  - ASalazarMX 9y ago
    The business guys who are into watches tend to buy fakes that can fool people like them. FTFY
    - dreamfactored 9y ago
      I've had exactly that conversation with a few. You'd be surprised how many are serious collectors who invest in watches. That doesn't work with fakes. That whole Rolex culture is also a deliberate part of how they sniff out fake people. The examples in the article were terrible, I'm not a watch guy and could spot them a mile off. I can usually tell with bags, wallets, shoes. Very few fakes don't have clear tells if you know the originals, I sometimes wonder if it's deliberate.
dclowd9901 9y ago
I see people crying about high quality fakes, and I interpret it as the initial problem with the luxury goods market: they’re bullshit and overvalued. If your product can easily be replaced by a much lower price knock off, what you’ve made is something of no actual value, and you get what you deserve.
- derpaderp1 9y ago
  We all knowingly support software patents with the businesses we work with. This is no different. These brands were there first and did the research and development pursuant to establishing what is a good user experience and most-desirable in a handbag, watch, et cetera.
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    This is really closer to a trademark issue than patent, no? Few people are buying a watch for the process by which the watch works, but rather for the quality and status (and price) that the brand represents. To check this hypothesis, think about how mad anybody would be if the internals of a watch were copied exactly on a fake, but the branding, name, logo were totally unique.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    No, those handbags and watches are bought simply because they allow the buyer to signal 'status'. If people with less money also get to signal that same status then the original loses its value. That's really all there is to it, a good user experience doesn't come in to play at all (most of that stuff is unusable anyway) and the 'most desirable' bit is exactly that: status.
    - derpaderp1 9y ago
      Your company doesn't use AWS, GCE, or Azure? Which brand are you into to maintain your status?
    - dreamfactored 9y ago
      It's about design, and design is inherently about quality and value. It's the reason you might choose to pay more for a handmade Italian shirt made in a small workshop that has been running forever compared to a mass-produced one made with the cheapest labour in Myanmar (though functionally equivalent at a basic level). The Italian shirt will have better fabric, stitching, a more expensive split-yoke that hangs better on your body - real tangible things. Design only denotes status via knowledge of this value, not by having the money to afford it per se. So it's more a marker of education and sophistication. That does mean moving up Maslow's hierarchy so there is an economic element but that's not the essence of it. Sure I would need more money to buy the handmade shirt from the Tuscan workshop, but I would also need to know about it in the first place and why it might be worth paying more - it's really more about knowledge than money. So are Adidas any better than low cost no-name trainers or knockoffs? For a kid the answer is unequivocal and you are socially dead without the original; I hover between the two personally. Design is not about 1%er luxury or fashion fads - it's really important at a national level. Obviously there is soft power with its indirect effects, but there is also the direct economy. Good design eventually tends to become commoditised and so there is economic value in being able to create new design - this is actually a vital process for every developed economy not to be crushed by whichever country is offering the cheapest labour. An example is suitcase manufacturer Rimowa. If you look at their website it's a history of innovation in their field for the last 100 years, from aluminium trunks in the 1930s, to watertight luggage in the 70s. Still if you want a super expensive very high quality aluminium suitcase, they don't have competition, I guess due to that requiring pretty specialised production and expensive raw materials. If you buy one from them, they will repair it and knock dents out for free for lifetime (likewise Hermes will clean and press their ties for free, a difficult job which can easily ruin a silk tie) - so very high quality and standards. Maybe one day you will be able to buy a near-enough Asian copy for very cheap, but until then, this German company has the whole world's business for really nice aluminium cases. Rimowa also made a materials innovation in 2000 with polycarbonate suitcases - extremely lightweight, flexible, and near unbreakable from impact. For quite a while they were the only ones to make them. Recently however, that's been commoditised and you can buy cheap knockoffs which are fairly close to the original at a functional level. So now Rimowa have to find the next innovation as the cycle repeats to find a new USP for their products (e.g. now they are starting to get into trackable luggage with electronic airline tags). That's Rimowa, but each company in a developed country within a global economy cannot compete on being cheapest, and instead needs to follow this process of competing on intellectual capital to stay in business. It requires at least a society with high levels of education in design, and a functioning legal system covering IP. China are now also starting to face this reality as they cease to provide the cheapest labour globally and have a growing middle class to support - and you'll therefore see increasing focus on design, innovation, quality, and finally IP even. To your original complaint, you do sometimes hear of flashy gaudy things which are supposed to signal status via cost (tacos made with gold leaf and caviar, diamond-encrusted phones, gold-plated ferraris etc) - but you'll notice that those are considered poor design, never get taken up and commoditised, and only have economic value as marketing tools to get gawpers in for lower price items. They don't ever represent real IP in the way that the ipad, or high quality luxury goods do, but are instead held up as anti-patterns (which is why we hear about them).
Animats 9y ago
In the Swiss watch business, many movements are made by outsourcing firms. Some of the fakes have the same movement as the real item. It's all about the branding. If you want to know what time it is, get a solar-powered Casio G-Shock that corrects from WWV and similar time sources. Costs $89.[1] Requires no user attention. More accurate than any mechanical watch. [1] https://www.amazon.com/G-Shock-AWG-M100-1ACR-Tough-Solar-Atomic/dp/B00791R1BO https://www.amazon.com/G-Shock-AWG-M100-1ACR-Tough-Solar-Ato...
- foobarrio 9y ago
  +1 for G-Shocks. Even though Casio rates the accuracy of it's $8 FW91 quartz watch at "only" around 1 second per day[1], many people observe 1 second per month with others observing 0 seconds after 2-3 months. This makes it more accurate than almost all mechanical watches in any price range. [1] http://support.casio.com/storage/en/manual/pdf/EN/009/qw593.pdf http://support.casio.com/storage/en/manual/pdf/EN/009/qw593.... I love my mechanical watches but I bought them because they look cool not for their time keeping ability.
- sdrothrock 9y ago
  > Some of the fakes have the same movement as the real item. Not just "some," many of them do, in fact. A lot of low end "luxury" watches don't even have custom movements, just standard ETAs. Chinese factories can produce clones of the ETA 2824 and 2836 movements, so you can get a fake watch with the exact same movement for a fraction of the price. If you ever decide you want COSC-level timing, you can just buy an ETA and swap it in. Factories are also producing high-quality replicas of in-house movements such as the Rolex 3132 -- I say "replicas" because they can take the same parts that you'd use to repair a genuine movement. Once you're at that level, you need a loupe and a mental encyclopedia to be able to figure out what's going on and which is real. Edit: Replaced "China" to clarify that it's not a national aim or anything like that. > G-shock Ironically, the fake industry doesn't just apply to mechanical watches -- even G-shocks are faked quite well. You can buy them from $5-10 quite often because the base parts are just that cheap.
  - makomk 9y ago
neya 9y ago
This is not just limited to watches, of course. I'm an avid collector of headphones. One of my favorite legendary headphones is the Sony MDR V6 [1]. I made about 3 purchases before I could get my hands on a real one. Even some popular retailers sell fakes unknowingly. The fakes are so good that most of the time you wouldn't even know [2]. And they only keep improving. There was once I spotted a fake in a Sony showroom in Asia and even they were blown away when I pointed out the differences. Thankfully, they took it off the shelf. It's a really, really a sad thing in the collector's world. China of course, is where most fakes are made, and you'd be surprised how many fakes are out there on Alibaba, despite Jack Ma claiming otherwise. This is their bread and butter. With all that said, I think it's perhaps a cultural issue, as everything they possess is a clone of something: Baidu = Google Weibo = Twitter Youtube = Youku . . . . Even their high speed rails were a brutal rip off of the Japanese trains [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_MDR-V6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_MDR-V6 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiGoyNbVDvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiGoyNbVDvI [3] http://fortune.com/2013/04/15/did-china-steal-japans-high-speed-train/ http://fortune.com/2013/04/15/did-china-steal-japans-high-sp...
- foobarrio 9y ago
  There seems to be at least some differing cultural values. I've had experiences with tea houses in TW/CN where the tea that is served is not really what I ordered and instead of being embarrassed or apologetic about it, they are impressed that I can even tell the difference! My friend had someone brew the same tea in different ways and try to sell it to him at different prices. When called out the guy seemed delighted at the challenge!

46 points by SQL2219 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

If a high quality watch is made from the same materials, in the same conditions, with the same brand logo, what does the term fake even mean? From the article: "Historically, less than 5 percent of the watches that we authenticate are fake,” said Powell. “At one point this number was as high as 10 percent.” However, the numbers are growing." Is it possible that the number of "fake" watches was always going up but that even experts can't tell the difference any more? And lastly, is it legal for watch sellers re-sell fake watches themselves? If they do, what incentive does a watch seller have for telling you the watch you want to sell to them is authentic?

adventured 9y ago
> If a high quality watch is made from the same materials, in the same conditions, with the same brand logo, what does the term fake even mean? It means made by an entity without authorization to produce that thing with that brand. Not authentic. It's operating without the historical reputation of the brand (company) behind it, which typically applies to things such as quality, customer service, resale value, etc. If I buy an identical item (as close as possible) to a high priced luxury watch, made by a counterfeiter, are they going to provide me support for the item I bought? Do they stand behind the counterfeit? No. That's the consequence of it not being authentic, it doesn't come with any of the other substance behind it.
- goialoq 9y ago
  "Authorization" is not more of a factor in quality than materials and production. Authorization is a proxy for these things.
- grkvlt 9y ago
  Not necessarily. 'Honest John's Genuine Rolexes and Used Cars' could well provide support and warranty for the watch they sold me. It may even be in Honest John's best interest to fix at least minor issues, to prevent me discovering I bought a fake. It's only Rolex who are not bound to provide any services.
nkrisc 9y ago
> If a high quality watch is made from the same materials, in the same conditions, with the same brand logo, what does the term fake even mean? That doesn't quite sound like it's the case here though. That's what happens with other products and after-hours, unofficial production runs though. In that case, there is no difference and the issue is really just a legal one. It sounds like these watches, while difficult to determine as fake, aren't quite the same quality as the real things.
blacksmith_tb 9y ago
I think the problem is these fakes are better than bad, but not good, quite. Swiss watch prices are partly inflated by hype, but the quality of many of those movements, and having been assembled by professionals, is worth quite a bit. Where a cosmetically good knockoff will have a less fabulous movement, and may or may not have been built by a skilled watchmaker. Selling them upfront as "homage" or "replica" watches seems fine to me, though. Presumably the incentive the jewelers and watch-sellers have to avoid participating in the fiction is loss of reputation. Once one buyer comes forward to say you sold them a fake, the floodgates would open.
foobarrio 9y ago
A lot of the advantages of the "better" construction aren't seen until the watch is older. An acrylic glass vs saphire glass crystal on a watch both look the same when new. Over 10 years, they will look much different. Heat-treated blued steel watch hands supposedly rust much less compared to the chemically treated blued hands. I am not sure if this justifies the price difference of a $50 fake vs $5,000 Rolex. I've never owned a watch for more than 5 years so none of this is personal experience! However the recent wave of smart watches made me look into watches now and I have a couple of nice dress watches I researched a bit before I purchased.
- at-fates-hands 9y ago
  > I am not sure if this justifies the price difference of a $50 fake vs $5,000 Rolex. I owned a five year old Rolex Submariner and had it for about three years. You could tell it was a solid, well built watch. However, after the first six months, I found it was not keeping very accurate time. Sent it back to Rolex and they fixed it and sent it back. Was fine for another six months, then it started again. Sent it back and was charged $300 for the repair. After another four months it started again and I finally gave up on it and sold it for a fraction of its worth. This is pretty much par for the course on the high end stuff I've bought over my lifetime. High end (not pro stock) hockey stuff just falls apart and isn't durable. Soccer stuff? Same thing. Dress shoes, suits, clothing? Same thing. High end mountain bikes? Same thing. I had three high end mountain bikes (all different manufacturers) and the derailleurs needed adjustment constantly, the high end Magura hydraulic disc brakes squealed constantly and the Fox forks all leaked after a few months. I was a single track guy so its not like I was doing Red Bull contests either. I got a middle tier Cannondale and have had it since 2006 with little or no issues. I found that after so many years of being disappointed with "high end" expensive stuff, your best bet is to not get the lowest cost thing or the most expensive, but the middle tier stuff I've always found to be not only durable, but far more dependable.
  - foobarrio 9y ago
    That sucks to hear. I guess this is also similar to high-end cars where they are more problematic than a trusty Toyota Corolla. I've love to own a Rolex Explorer or an Omega Seamaster one day but I am not sure I would ever buy one. I've been happy with Seikos and Casios. I daily wear a Seiko sarb033 on a black leather strap and it honestly as classy as I'd ever want out of watch. I really want to believe that branding isn't the only difference when comparing high-end watches but perhaps this is not the case.
compiler-guy 9y ago
If the two are completely indistinguishable, it means that the company is on the hook for warranty service. Worse, it means that the company no longer controls its own distribution channels, pricing or exports. If the company makes a mid-model change (bug fix, whatever), then it also can't stop shipments of the bad ones.
- jackcarter 9y ago
  To corroborate the warranty issue: There's a temporary exhibit at Winterthur in Delaware [0] on the topic of counterfeits. They had a fake Birkin bag next to a genuine article, and apparently the fake had been through an official Hermes cleaning without detection. [0] http://www.winterthur.org/treasuresontrial http://www.winterthur.org/treasuresontrial
_ph_ 9y ago
Well, isn't it quite simple? The original watch was made and sold by the company which constructed and designed it. At a minimum, buying a fake is equivalent to buying software on the black market, afterall, the bits are the same... But of course, the fakes usually are cheaper, because they are not as well made as the originals. That is ofte not visible by an outside inspection, but might contain different qualities of metal used, different production processes, less care of assembly. Have you seen how much know-how goes just into making the main spring of a Rolex? They invested a lot of R&D into it. Of course you can just use a standard spring. But it won't be the same quality. If you don't appreciate that extra bit of quality in a Rolex (or any other comparable brand), then there are excellent original mechanical watches at basically any price point, starting at $ 100 up. Finally, I don't think it is legal to sell or resell fake watches in many places, in some countries even owning them can be a felony. If you don't disclose that the watch is fake, it is clear fraud, and even if you do, it is still a misuse of copyrighted and trademarked material.
smn1234 9y ago
An iPhone knockoff will not function as well as an iPhone. Whether material used or engineering of components or assembly of the end product. It’s not about simple, straightforward metals either, but very specific, proprietary, researched blends. Some watch brands use metals that make the watch incredibly light. Others, based on clients’ preference, make the watch very heavy. Particluarly, in a high end watch, not only do you pay for the craftsmanship and artistic design, form and function, but also for accuracy (e.g. +/- seconds lost per day, how certain tilts and the effect of gravity on influencing loss in accuracy) and power reserve and level of complications all working together. No disruption from magnetism or other natural forces. A lot of refinement goes into a high end watch. A fake becomes pretty obvious. You also have to appreciate the scale. All that mechanics. Went from grandfather clocks to pocket watches to wrist watches. Getting smaller, more complicated (day, date, moon phase, alarms, etc.) and days of “natural” power reserve. It’s quite fascinating engineering in fact ....

RickJWagner 9y ago

In a way, I guess this is a form of 'luxury tax'. You can buy an excellent watch for under $30 at any Wal-Mart. It'll come with a no-hassle warranty, will be handsome in appearance and will function flawlessly. But it won't be a 'luxury good' and it never will be.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
For all the recent talk of the energy cost of bitcoin, it would seem a far greater amount of energy (money, time etc.) is expended on making things that are slightly worse than other options that are available, but more exclusive and therefore sought after by some part of our monkey brains.
FiatLuxDave 9y ago
I've always wanted to start a luxury brand called TAKEN. "Wow! What kind of watch is that?" "I got TAKEN!" The ultimate Veblen good.
- grkvlt 9y ago
  Actually, 'Veblen Watches' sounds really good... I wonder if the name is available?
SyneRyder 9y ago
That reminds me of a quote from the book "The Billionaire Who Wasn't", about Chuck Feeney, co-founder of DFS, who secretly donated $8 Billion to various charitable causes until he was outed: “Since my earliest days I have been frugal, but I am a frugal person in that I hate waste, at any level,” says Feeney, who always wears off-the-peg clothes, a cheap plastic watch, and reading glasses of the type sold in book-stores. “If I can get a watch for $15 that keeps perfect time, what am I doing messing around with a Rolex?”
- makomk 9y ago
  I imagine there may have been some other reasons he wanted to keep the donations to Sinn Fein a secret at least, but yeah... (Their paramilitary wing the Provisional IRA was still bombing British cities back then.)

Alex3917 9y ago

> But in the case of watches like Movado, Omega and Rolex, it’s getting harder to tell the real from the replica and the stakes are surprisingly high. Verizon should send the author to live in Yemen for a year.

ChrisClark 9y ago

I know a very wealthy businessman in China, he's expected to wear expensive watches, dress the part, etc. But he just buys fakes all the time. It looks real enough to impress, and he saves a lot of money.

goialoq 9y ago
This is reportedly quite common. Supposedly (but I have doubts), there's a similar market for cellphones with fake specs -- the consumers know the specs are fake, but they need the fake exterior to impress their business partners.
- grkvlt 9y ago
  > cellphones with fake specs but, don't you just need to show off any old cellphone, and then say something like 'this baby has twenty-three ARM IXXIX cores, running at one hundred point six gigahertz, with forty terabytes and a double AMDXOLCiD display!' to fake the specs?
dreamfactored 9y ago
The business guys who are into watches tend to have a good look at each others, talk watch collecting for a while, and can usually tell fakes.
- ASalazarMX 9y ago
  The business guys who are into watches tend to buy fakes that can fool people like them. FTFY
  - dreamfactored 9y ago
    I've had exactly that conversation with a few. You'd be surprised how many are serious collectors who invest in watches. That doesn't work with fakes. That whole Rolex culture is also a deliberate part of how they sniff out fake people. The examples in the article were terrible, I'm not a watch guy and could spot them a mile off. I can usually tell with bags, wallets, shoes. Very few fakes don't have clear tells if you know the originals, I sometimes wonder if it's deliberate.

dclowd9901 9y ago

I see people crying about high quality fakes, and I interpret it as the initial problem with the luxury goods market: they’re bullshit and overvalued. If your product can easily be replaced by a much lower price knock off, what you’ve made is something of no actual value, and you get what you deserve.

derpaderp1 9y ago
We all knowingly support software patents with the businesses we work with. This is no different. These brands were there first and did the research and development pursuant to establishing what is a good user experience and most-desirable in a handbag, watch, et cetera.
- Simon_says 9y ago
  This is really closer to a trademark issue than patent, no? Few people are buying a watch for the process by which the watch works, but rather for the quality and status (and price) that the brand represents. To check this hypothesis, think about how mad anybody would be if the internals of a watch were copied exactly on a fake, but the branding, name, logo were totally unique.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  No, those handbags and watches are bought simply because they allow the buyer to signal 'status'. If people with less money also get to signal that same status then the original loses its value. That's really all there is to it, a good user experience doesn't come in to play at all (most of that stuff is unusable anyway) and the 'most desirable' bit is exactly that: status.
  - derpaderp1 9y ago
    Your company doesn't use AWS, GCE, or Azure? Which brand are you into to maintain your status?
  - dreamfactored 9y ago
    It's about design, and design is inherently about quality and value. It's the reason you might choose to pay more for a handmade Italian shirt made in a small workshop that has been running forever compared to a mass-produced one made with the cheapest labour in Myanmar (though functionally equivalent at a basic level). The Italian shirt will have better fabric, stitching, a more expensive split-yoke that hangs better on your body - real tangible things. Design only denotes status via knowledge of this value, not by having the money to afford it per se. So it's more a marker of education and sophistication. That does mean moving up Maslow's hierarchy so there is an economic element but that's not the essence of it. Sure I would need more money to buy the handmade shirt from the Tuscan workshop, but I would also need to know about it in the first place and why it might be worth paying more - it's really more about knowledge than money. So are Adidas any better than low cost no-name trainers or knockoffs? For a kid the answer is unequivocal and you are socially dead without the original; I hover between the two personally. Design is not about 1%er luxury or fashion fads - it's really important at a national level. Obviously there is soft power with its indirect effects, but there is also the direct economy. Good design eventually tends to become commoditised and so there is economic value in being able to create new design - this is actually a vital process for every developed economy not to be crushed by whichever country is offering the cheapest labour. An example is suitcase manufacturer Rimowa. If you look at their website it's a history of innovation in their field for the last 100 years, from aluminium trunks in the 1930s, to watertight luggage in the 70s. Still if you want a super expensive very high quality aluminium suitcase, they don't have competition, I guess due to that requiring pretty specialised production and expensive raw materials. If you buy one from them, they will repair it and knock dents out for free for lifetime (likewise Hermes will clean and press their ties for free, a difficult job which can easily ruin a silk tie) - so very high quality and standards. Maybe one day you will be able to buy a near-enough Asian copy for very cheap, but until then, this German company has the whole world's business for really nice aluminium cases. Rimowa also made a materials innovation in 2000 with polycarbonate suitcases - extremely lightweight, flexible, and near unbreakable from impact. For quite a while they were the only ones to make them. Recently however, that's been commoditised and you can buy cheap knockoffs which are fairly close to the original at a functional level. So now Rimowa have to find the next innovation as the cycle repeats to find a new USP for their products (e.g. now they are starting to get into trackable luggage with electronic airline tags). That's Rimowa, but each company in a developed country within a global economy cannot compete on being cheapest, and instead needs to follow this process of competing on intellectual capital to stay in business. It requires at least a society with high levels of education in design, and a functioning legal system covering IP. China are now also starting to face this reality as they cease to provide the cheapest labour globally and have a growing middle class to support - and you'll therefore see increasing focus on design, innovation, quality, and finally IP even. To your original complaint, you do sometimes hear of flashy gaudy things which are supposed to signal status via cost (tacos made with gold leaf and caviar, diamond-encrusted phones, gold-plated ferraris etc) - but you'll notice that those are considered poor design, never get taken up and commoditised, and only have economic value as marketing tools to get gawpers in for lower price items. They don't ever represent real IP in the way that the ipad, or high quality luxury goods do, but are instead held up as anti-patterns (which is why we hear about them).

Animats 9y ago

In the Swiss watch business, many movements are made by outsourcing firms. Some of the fakes have the same movement as the real item. It's all about the branding. If you want to know what time it is, get a solar-powered Casio G-Shock that corrects from WWV and similar time sources. Costs $89.[1] Requires no user attention. More accurate than any mechanical watch. [1] https://www.amazon.com/G-Shock-AWG-M100-1ACR-Tough-Solar-Atomic/dp/B00791R1BO https://www.amazon.com/G-Shock-AWG-M100-1ACR-Tough-Solar-Ato...

foobarrio 9y ago
+1 for G-Shocks. Even though Casio rates the accuracy of it's $8 FW91 quartz watch at "only" around 1 second per day[1], many people observe 1 second per month with others observing 0 seconds after 2-3 months. This makes it more accurate than almost all mechanical watches in any price range. [1] http://support.casio.com/storage/en/manual/pdf/EN/009/qw593.pdf http://support.casio.com/storage/en/manual/pdf/EN/009/qw593.... I love my mechanical watches but I bought them because they look cool not for their time keeping ability.
sdrothrock 9y ago
> Some of the fakes have the same movement as the real item. Not just "some," many of them do, in fact. A lot of low end "luxury" watches don't even have custom movements, just standard ETAs. Chinese factories can produce clones of the ETA 2824 and 2836 movements, so you can get a fake watch with the exact same movement for a fraction of the price. If you ever decide you want COSC-level timing, you can just buy an ETA and swap it in. Factories are also producing high-quality replicas of in-house movements such as the Rolex 3132 -- I say "replicas" because they can take the same parts that you'd use to repair a genuine movement. Once you're at that level, you need a loupe and a mental encyclopedia to be able to figure out what's going on and which is real. Edit: Replaced "China" to clarify that it's not a national aim or anything like that. > G-shock Ironically, the fake industry doesn't just apply to mechanical watches -- even G-shocks are faked quite well. You can buy them from $5-10 quite often because the base parts are just that cheap.
- makomk 9y ago

neya 9y ago

This is not just limited to watches, of course. I'm an avid collector of headphones. One of my favorite legendary headphones is the Sony MDR V6 [1]. I made about 3 purchases before I could get my hands on a real one. Even some popular retailers sell fakes unknowingly. The fakes are so good that most of the time you wouldn't even know [2]. And they only keep improving. There was once I spotted a fake in a Sony showroom in Asia and even they were blown away when I pointed out the differences. Thankfully, they took it off the shelf. It's a really, really a sad thing in the collector's world. China of course, is where most fakes are made, and you'd be surprised how many fakes are out there on Alibaba, despite Jack Ma claiming otherwise. This is their bread and butter. With all that said, I think it's perhaps a cultural issue, as everything they possess is a clone of something: Baidu = Google Weibo = Twitter Youtube = Youku . . . . Even their high speed rails were a brutal rip off of the Japanese trains [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_MDR-V6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_MDR-V6 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiGoyNbVDvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiGoyNbVDvI [3] http://fortune.com/2013/04/15/did-china-steal-japans-high-speed-train/ http://fortune.com/2013/04/15/did-china-steal-japans-high-sp...

foobarrio 9y ago
There seems to be at least some differing cultural values. I've had experiences with tea houses in TW/CN where the tea that is served is not really what I ordered and instead of being embarrassed or apologetic about it, they are impressed that I can even tell the difference! My friend had someone brew the same tea in different ways and try to sell it to him at different prices. When called out the guy seemed delighted at the challenge!